Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Completing the Census

I must say that the advertising for this year's Census has been either inept (snapshot of America) or offensive (get your piece of the pie). But we still filled ours out and sent it in this week. Unless you're a reality show family, this decade's form is thankfully quite brief. It sticks to the standard name, sex, race statistics that have been present on the form since 1790.

One question I was surprised wasn't on the form was whether each inhabitant was a US citizen or not. It would seem to me that you would want representation to be based on the number of citizens in an area, not merely the number of inhabitants. But I don't think this has ever been the case, going back to the 3/5ths compromise the founders themselves created.

6 comments:

John said...

I find the promotional literature urging completion of the Census in order to get one's community's share of federal pork distressing. It would be nice if people found such an argument repellent.

Jim said...

If you find returning your tax dollars to your community "distressing", don't return the census form. I'm sure Wisconsin and Montana would be more than happy to take your money.

bob said...

Jim, Wouldn't it be a whole lot better if they didn't take it in the first place.

John said...

What bob said. I don't want their money and I don't want them to have mine.

Jim said...

Even to repair roads? Inspect bridges? Expand airports? Clear the snow? Prevent terrorists from setting off bombs in the subway?

John said...

I would accept as a necessary evil that the federal government should fulfill enumerated powers granted to it under the Constitution. Beyond a headcount, no other Census data is necessary to accomplish these tasks.